Some local Maryland governments are charging residents for recycling bins equipped with monitoring devices in an effort to gauge participation in area recycling programs.
Frederick County, Howard County and Gaithersburg have purchased nearly 150,000 recycling bins equipped with tracking microchips, according to a report by Rehrig Pacific, the company that manufactures the bins.
The Washington Examiner reported last week that several Northern Virginia communities were charging residents for recycling bins featuring the tracking devices. But some Maryland localities far outpace their Virginia neighbors when it comes to the new technology.
Frederick and Howard counties have purchased roughly 70,000 and 76,000 of the high-tech bins, respectively, and are among Rehrig’s largest U.S. customers.
County officials say the new technology keeps track of how frequently residents set out their recycling bins for pickup, but isn’t used to measure amounts or types of materials households are recycling.
Dawn Adams, Frederick County’s recycling program manager, said residents worried when the bins were first implemented in January of 2009.
“There were some concerns from people, asking if we were watching what they were recycling,” Adams said. “We don’t. And those concerns have died down.”
Adams said homeowners are not required to use the new bins, but every homeowner pays for the carts as part of the county’s annual $84 “system benefit charge,” which goes toward waste pickup and other services.
Information gathered using the tracking device is linked to each individual homeowner’s address. However, Adams said the data was used only to gauge neighborhood participation in the county’s recycling program.
“We can see if participation is lower in certain areas, so then we can target those areas more for outreach,” she said.
Gaithersburg started giving residents the microchip-loaded bins last year, and about 15 percent of the city’s roughly 12,000 residents now use them.
Ollie Mumpower, Gaithersburg’s engineering services director, said the new bins were a huge success among residents.
“We’ve gotten more positive feedback on those big bins than anything else since I’ve been here in the last 20 years,” Mumpower said.
He said the city had not yet begun to analyze the collected data.
